On April 24, the Boris Paton State Polytechnic Museum opened an exhibition entitled “The Fairy-Tale World of Illustrator and Graphic Artist Kato K. Lukach.” It features works by the renowned 20th-century graphic artist, designer, and advertising artist, who is very popular in Hungary today. The exhibition is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of her birth.
💥
The opening of this exhibition is certainly timely. After all, foreign relations between Ukraine and Hungary are not currently at their best. However, there are other dimensions to relations between nations, especially those with centuries of experience of neighborliness: human, humanitarian, scientific, and cultural. The director of the museum, Natalia Pysarevska, reminded us of this in her opening speech before the opening of the exhibition: "We know the official political position of the state, but we also know that there is a second part to this official position. This is the provision of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. How can we thank Hungary as people who know how to be grateful? For the fully equipped kindergarten in Zahaltsy, built with the participation of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; for the assistance provided to internally displaced persons in 20 regions of Ukraine since 2014...; for generators for the village of Malokaterynivka in the Zaporizhzhia region, 10 km from the front line, and for settlements in the Kyiv region after its liberation; for helping people who fled the war and temporarily moved to Hungary, of whom this country has accepted approximately 1.4 million... She also added that, in addition to the state, Hungarian charitable organizations are actively working in Ukraine, doing a great deal for our people.
"It is natural for neighbors to help each other. I really hope that those Ukrainians, those moms with kids who are now in Hungary and other European countries, will soon be able to return to a peaceful Ukraine," said Antal Heizer, Hungary's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine, who also attended the opening. “As for today's exhibition, I don't want to say much about the artist, because there are people who know her better... But I am very happy that two museums in Hungary are dedicated to her work, and that we were able to bring part of this creative legacy to Ukraine today.”
Kato K. Lukach is a significant figure in the art and publishing of her country in the 20th century. At different periods of her life, this artist worked in various genres of fine arts, including decorative and applied arts, as evidenced by the extremely interesting exhibits on display. Kato Lukach's works belong to their time and, at the same time, have already become part of art history. They are a living part of it because, for example, her alphabets (in the best of such books, the artist cannot but be the co-author of the text) are eagerly examined and studied by modern children, not to mention the pleasure they get from the collections of fairy tales and poems she has designed.
It is no less fascinating for adults to get acquainted with her design and advertising works, which, incidentally, was evident at the opening of the exhibition. She created bright and memorable images for everything: ladies' hats and cigarette boxes, various cabinets and newspaper stands, an aspirin advertising brochure and wrapping paper for Easter goods, packaging for children's soap and a shoe advertisement layout, even sketches of banknotes, and more! In short, she was one of the masters who shaped the visual image of her time and the material world.
Incidentally, the names of artists working in this field do not often become known to the general public, but it is they who create the artistic backdrop against which each person's life unfolds. Kato K. Lukach was one of the best, and her applied works fit very well into the interwar period of the first half of the 20th century — when you look at them, you immediately understand what time they are from. It is also worth noting that her work as a designer and advertiser fit perfectly into the general European context, which in the first half of the 20th century was characterized by the almost complete dominance of the Art Deco style.
Incidentally, the book illustration with which we began our story about her work chronologically belongs to the second part of her enormous creative legacy. In her work on children's books, she found refuge from the ideological steamroller of the communist regime that ruled her country for a long time after World War II.
In the photo: the craftswoman's workWhy did the organizers choose KPI among numerous universities to exhibit Kata Lukach's works in Ukraine? Antal Heizer answered this question to a correspondent of Kyiv Polytechnic as follows: "First of all, we already have cooperation with your university, we have already opened exhibitions here. It is a long-standing cooperation, and now we are trying to revive it. One of the tasks of our embassy is to restore and improve bilateral relations, which were weakened first by COVID and then by the war. Ensuring cooperation with universities is one of the areas of our work. Among the areas of cooperation between Ukrainian and Hungarian universities are scholarship programs: Hungary offers 100 scholarship programs for Ukrainian citizens every year. There is a so-called Rectors' Conference in Hungary, and we very much hope, as far as possible in the current war situation, to organize a visit by its delegation to Ukraine so that the rectors can visit a number of universities to restore and establish cooperation. There is a technical university in Budapest, which is one of the 200 best universities in the world, and it would be great if its cooperation with KPI were to resume...".
Finally, we would like to add that getting to know Kato Lukács' work from a professional point of view will certainly be interesting and useful for students of Kyiv Polytechnic. First of all, of course, for those who are getting their higher education at the Educational and Scientific Publishing and Printing Institute. But most likely for representatives of other specialties as well. The exhibition will be open until May 22, so find the time to check it out, it's worth it.